Even as entrepreneurs wrestle with Web 2.0, it's time to look ahead at the next generation of online tools and techniques. In this three-part series, bMighty takes a look at where we've come from and where we're headed.
For well over a decade now, the Web, the Internet on which it rides and the various software devices and programs that make it work have been evolving so rapidly--creating so many business opportunities and challenges--that many small and mid-sized businesses have been busy just hanging on.
The good news: Things aren't going to slow down. The challenging news: Things really aren't going to slow down. And while envisaging all the incarnations of these technologies is all but impossible, entrepreneurs would be wise to try to anticipate the changes that could truly boost (or upend) their businesses.
Part 1: Where We've Been And Where We Are
It's a mistake to try to label the Web with iterations: Web 1.0, Web 1.4, Web 2.0 and so forth. The Web is too ubiquitous, too constantly in flux, too flexible, too all-things-for-all-people-and-businesses to be comfortably categorized.
Click here for Part 2: The Next Web
Click here for Part 3: Web 3.0--The Risks And Rewards
Still, it's convenient to have road markers when you're tying to map new territory, especially territory as broad as the Web. The following outline gives a sense of the areas of demarcation between different "versions" of the Web.
Web 1.0: Where We Were (1994 to 2004)
--HTML Web pages
--Browsers
--E-mail becomes ubiquitous as a business tool
--Online stores
--Search engines
--Dot-com boom (and bust)
Web 2.0: Where We Are (2004 to present)
--Fast connections enable more vibrant content
--Much of that content is user-generated
--Online sales become a measurable and increasingly important part of the economy
--Keywords enhance search engine position
--Click-through advertising
--Social networking sites--MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc.--create online communities and vastly enhance online marketing (including viral marketing)
--Wikis
--Wireless devices
Web 3.0: Where We're Headed (ca. 2008 onward)
Keep reading:
Take a look at any of the elements listed above--bearing in mind that this list barely scratches the surface of the technologies and trends that comprise the Web--and think about how it affects both your business and the way you do business.
Some technologies--such as social networking and Wikis--may have been tangential to your business so far (and may remain so). But others--like e-mail, Instant Messaging, browser-based communication, search engines like Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and online marketing--are by now so central to virtually every type of business that to think of doing business without them is, well, unthinkable.
Just as clearly, many of these technologies and trends have as yet to be fully integrated into business or fully exploited by it. That's an ongoing process, evolving even as it progresses.
Standing on this admittedly uncertain terrain, the question is: Where do we go next--and what does that mean for your business? For some answers to those questions, read on.
Click here for Part 2: The Next Web
Click here for Part 3: Web 3.0--The Risks and the Rewards
Keith Ferrell is the author of a dozen books and countless magazine and newspaper articles. The editor of OMNI Magazine from 1990 to 1996, he also is a frequent speaker for corporate and institutional audiences.
